Best Served Cold

“I’d be scared to get the scissors out in case you tried to strip.”

That brought a laugh from him. “Very good. Reckon that earns you another pull.” He held out the bottle.

“I’m quite the humorist, for a woman who hires killers.” She came closer to take it. Close enough to give him a kind of tingle in the side that was near her. Close enough that he could feel the breath in his throat all of a sudden, coming quick. He looked away, not wanting to make a fool of himself any more than he’d been doing the last couple of weeks. Heard her tip the bottle, heard her drink. “Thanks again.”

“Not a worry. Anything I can do, Chief, just let me know.”

When he turned his head she was looking right at him, lips pressed together in a hard line, eyes fixed on his, that way she had, like she was working out how much he was worth. “There is one other thing.”

– 

M orveer pushed the last lips of lead into position with consummate delicacy and stowed his glazing tools.

“Will that do?” asked Day.

“I doubt it will deflect a rainstorm, but it will serve until tomorrow. By then I suspect they will have considerably greater worries than a leaking window.” He rolled the last smudges of putty away from the glass, then followed his assistant across the rooftop to the parapet. Friendly had already negotiated the cord, a squat shape on the other side of a chasm of empty air. Morveer peered over the edge. Beyond the spikes and the ornamental carvings, the smooth stone pillar dropped vertiginously to the cobbled lane. One of the groups of guards slogged past it, lamps bobbing.

“What about the rope?” Day hissed once they were out of earshot. “When the sun comes up someone will-”

“No detail overlooked.” Morveer grinned as he produced the tiny vial from an inside pocket. “A few drops will burn through the knot some time after we have crossed. We need only wait at the far side and reel it in.”

As far as could be ascertained by darkness, his assistant appeared unconvinced. “What if it burns more quickly than-”

“It will not.”

“Seems like an awful chance, though.”

“What do I never take, my dear?”

“Chances, but-”

“You go first, then, by all means.”

“You can count on it.” Day swung quickly under the rope and swarmed across, hand over hand. It took her no longer than a count of thirty to make it to the other side.

Morveer uncorked the little bottle and allowed a few drops to fall onto the knots. Considering it, he allowed a few more. He had no desire to wait until sunup for the cursed thing to come apart. He allowed the next patrol to pass below, then clambered over the parapet with, it had to be admitted, a good deal less grace than his assistant had displayed. Still, there was no need for undue haste. Caution first, always. He took the rope in his gloved hands, swung beneath it, hooked one shoe over the top, lifted the other There was a harsh ripping sound, and the wind blew suddenly cold about his knee.

Morveer peered down. His trouser-leg had caught upon a spike bent upwards well above the others, and torn almost as far as his rump. He thrashed his foot, trying to untangle it, but only succeeded in entrapping it more thoroughly.

“Damn it.” Plainly, this had not been part of the plan. Faint smoke was curling now from the balustrade around which the rope was knotted. It appeared the acid was acting more swiftly than anticipated.

“Damn it.” He swung himself back to the roof of the bank and perched beside the smoking knot, gripping the rope with one hand. He slid his scalpel from an inside pocket, reached forwards and cut the flapping cloth away from the spike with a few deft strokes. One, two, three and it was almost done, neat as a surgeon. The final stroke and “Ah!” He realised with annoyance, then mounting horror, that he had nicked his ankle with the blade. “Damn it!” The edge was tainted with Larync tincture and, since the stuff had always given him a swell of nausea in the mornings, he had allowed his resistance to it to fade. It would not be fatal. Not of itself. But it might cause him to drop off a rope, and he had developed no immunity to a flailing plunge onto hard, hard cobblestones. The irony was bitter indeed. Most practitioners of his profession were killed, after all, by their own agents.

He pulled one glove off with his teeth and fumbled through his many pockets for that particular antidote, gurgling curses around the leather, swaying this way and that as the chill wind gusted up and spread gooseflesh all the way down his bare leg. Tiny tubes of glass rattled against his fingertips, each one etched with a mark that enabled him to identify it by touch.

Under the circumstances, though, the operation was still a testing one. He burped and felt a rush of nausea, a sudden painful shifting in his stomach. His fingers found the right mark. He let the glove fall from his mouth, pulled the phial from his coat with a trembling hand, dragged the cork out with his teeth and sucked up the contents.